Buying Guide

Is your company ready to reduce its climate footprint?

By purchasing Forest Carbon Offsets, your company can play a key role in tackling climate change through this Corporate Social Responsibility strategy.

1. Your business wants to be a leader in tackling climate change and has a strong commitment to improving its Corporate Social Responsibility.

With increased global pressure for businesses to start taking on more responsibility in protecting the planet, offsets are an effective way to mitigate your company's emissions, an opportunity to reach your Corporate Social Responsibility goals. It is also a great opportunity to market your climate leadership and to connect with your customers and staff.

2. Purchasing offsets is the most effective way your business can reduce deforestation and decrease carbon dioxide emissions.

We cannot slow the rate of rising global temperatures without reducing the rate of deforestation. Deforestation currently accounts for 15% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions globally, a percentage which continues to increase every year. When forests are cut and cleared, the carbon stored in them is released as carbon dioxide emissions. No other strategy enables private-sector businesses to so quickly and easily fight the root causes of carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. Your company’s purchase of offsets will keep carbon stored in trees, out of the atmosphere. It also falls in line with the Paris Climate Agreement, a global initiative to stop and reduce climate change. Purchasing offsets makes you a part of the solution.

BCP generates offsets by taking definitive steps to prevent deforestation of intact and existing forest cover. In this case, each forest carbon offset represents an area of protected forest that is a critical habitat for wildlife’s survival. In addition, funds generated from sales in invested into forest patrols conducted by Community Resource Boards.

4. Purchasing Offsets yields tangible social benefits; an investment you can market to your consumers.

Unlike other types of offsets, purchasing our Forest Carbon Offsets yields tangible social co-benefits that go beyond reducing carbon emissions. Social co-benefits that come to forest-dependent communities through purchases of offsets include access to health care and education, improved access to water and employment opportunities.

5. Your investment goes a long way.

When you purchase BCP's Forest Carbon Offsets you are helping to conserve vital forests, protect iconic wildlife, and improve the lives of Zambians.

Protecting some of the most threatened forests on the planet generates BCP’s Offsets. Zambia is a global hotspot of deforestation - it is the world’s fifth highest emitter of carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. Deforestation in Zambia emits 29.8 million* tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year; that’s an annual amount of emissions from 6.3 million cars. Purchasing BCP’s offsets from Zambia will have a profound effect on tackling global carbon emissions.

BCP focuses on Zambian forests that are simultaneously the most vulnerable to deforestation and the most beneficial to wildlife conservation. The Luangwa and Zambezi ecosystems are critical to maintaining a healthy and balanced ecosystem within the greater sub-Saharan African region. Without these forests, the region would be prone to increased erratic rainfall, drought, and consequently increased food insecurity.

Our projects are adjacent to two of Zambia’s most prominent national parks. They act as “buffers” between people and parks, ensuring threatened wildlife have a protected habitat while reducing people's unsustainable dependence on the forests.

6. Your clients care about your philanthropy.

People increasingly care about companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility activities. BCP’s carbon offsets are an effective and philanthropic way to help both people and nature.

7. You value quality.

You believe that to fulfill your company's Corporate Social Responsibility goals, your business needs to buy offsets that are real, scientifically measured, independently verified, and provide tangible impacts on protecting forests, improving biodiversity, and lifting people out of poverty.

At BCP, we value high quality, which is why we are certified to the highest international standards by two of the most widely recognized and respected independent authorities:

Our Lower Zambezi REDD+ Project is the first in Africa, and second in the world, to achieve gold level validation against all three categories of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards, for delivering exceptional benefits to communities, biodiversity and climate change. This guarantees that our offsets have tangible impacts.

BCP is also a certified B Corp. B Corps are for-profit companies certified by the nonprofit B Lab to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Of the world’s 2,100 B Corps, BCP was scored 3rd overall globally for our certified social and environmental impacts.

8. You want to support a successful and innovative organization.

BCP has been at the forefront of protecting forests in Africa since 2012. We are a new type of conservation organization and social enterprise guided by a mission to make forest conservation valuable to people. We do this by being on the ground, living and working alongside the communities that are involved in our projects. Our proven and successful model is based on tackling the poverty-driven causes of deforestation by building trust to form long-term binding agreements with forest dependent communities.

As an organization we have done things no one thought was possible. For example, we trained and pioneered the first community-based Forest Monitoring Team using digital data capture for forest carbon monitoring. We also become the first REDD+ project in Africa to achieve gold level validation against all 3 categories of the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard for exceptionally positive community and environmental impacts.

Our investment per household in 2015 was $146. That’s a total of $175,000 across 1,200 households. We believe that changing behavior must start at the local level. This change won’t happen unless we invest heavily in local communities and show them a financial alternative to cutting down their forests. By investing in offsets from us, you are directly supporting local communities. Local communities know best what they need. They decide on what projects are needed and provide resources into the projects. Projects have included:

Empowering rural Zambian women through careful and strong representation in the community and project development cooperatives, agricultural trainings, and economic activities.

Improving access to healthcare and education with a boat to cross a crocodile-infested river during the rainy season.

Increasing access to clean drinking water by rehabilitating wells and drilling boreholes in the villages.

Increasing access to education by paying for teachers in non-government supported community schools, and providing housing for them.

Increasing local access to healthcare and sanitation by building clinics and boreholes.

Alleviate poverty by creating new jobs and alternative incomes for people traditionally reliant on forests.

Empowering local Zambian women through careful and strong representation in the community and project development committees, agricultural trainings, and economic activities.

Improving access to healthcare and educational opportunities with a boat to ease transport across a river during the rainy season.

10. You want to see successful partnerships.

Over the past five years, we have successfully mobilized $16 million for conservation in capital from different sources. These include impact investors, commercial finance and donor funds. We won an internationally competitive bid worth $14 million in USAID funding to advance our carbon-offset work in Zambia. These private and public organizations have been key partners, providing up-front capital needed to get our projects off the ground and across thousands of hectares of Zambian forests.

11. You want to see experience on the ground – By Africans, for Africans.

We are majority African-citizen owned, African-headquartered and focused, and our team is 98% comprised of African-born staff. Our headquarters is in rural Zambia—amongst the communities and forests where we work; not in a capital city. We are a passionate team driven by a strong commitment to our mission - a better future for African forests and the communities that depend on them.